


Angel of Small Death

by sideraclara (angeloscastiel)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, Established Relationship, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Substance Abuse, what a combination of tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 20:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7122244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeloscastiel/pseuds/sideraclara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>they have been falling apart so long Albus can't remember what they were like whole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angel of Small Death

Albus couldn’t remember when he stopped wanting to go home.  
  
  
It was probably around late autumn, November-ish, when the streets of London were cold and gloomy as he trudged through them on the way back from St Mungo’s, passing rows of shop fronts and flats illuminated by warm light, that the thought of his dark, empty flat lost appeal. Scorpius was never home, or if he was he moved through it like a silent ghost trailing an arctic chill in his wake.  
  
  
Days had turned into weeks, weeks into months, and he knew he was clinging to something that he should have given up long ago. His parents had stayed quiet, even when his visits home became longer and more frequent – he told himself they were just happy to see him, pushed his fears and his doubts to the back of his mind and made up strings of lighthearted excuses.  
  
  
He should have known he could only stall them for so long.  
  
  
“So,” his mother said, after firmly pushing a cup of tea into his hands and steering him into the armchair opposite hers, “Your father and I have been wanting to talk to you.”  
  
  
“This sounds ominous.”  
  
  
“Good,” Ginny said matter-of-factly. “It’s always nice to know we’re still capable of instilling a healthy fear in our adult children. He’ll be home at five on the dot, he knows you’re here.”  
  
  
“James isn’t coming round?”  
  
  
“Nope. You’re not getting out of this conversation, Albus Severus Potter.”  
  
  
“This sounds like an intervention.”  
  
  
“Is there something we should be intervening for?”  
  
  
He was saved from answering by the telltale sounds of the Floo.  
  
  
“Harry?” Ginny called. “I’ve got him cornered.”  
  
  
“Good,” his father’s voice drifted in from the hallway. “Hi, Albus. You look like a startled cat.”  
  
  
“Thanks, Dad.”  
  
  
“Kettle’s just boiled,” Ginny continued, tilting her face upward to meet Harry’s kiss. Albus looked away pointedly.  
  
  
“Lovely,” Harry said, and ruffled Albus’s hair. “You’re nearly nineteen, don’t be such a prude.”  
  
  
“I was just giving you guys some privacy.”  
  
  
“Oh, we’ve got plenty of that,” Ginny said. “With Lily at school and you boys moved out – ”  
  
  
“ _Mum_.”  
  
  
“Though you dropping by all the time makes things a bit more risky,” Harry continued. “Last week when you were – ”  
  
  
“Dad. I will _leave_.”  
  
  
“Right,” Harry said, and drifted off to the kitchen. He returned a few minutes later with a cuppa, sat down, and glanced at Ginny. She nodded.  
  
  
“We need to know what’s been going on with Scorpius,” Harry said. “You’re spending all your time here, you’re brushing us off when we ask about him, you spent Christmas apart, and I’ve just heard some disturbing news from Hermione.”  
  
  
“What disturbing news from Hermione?” Albus asked, ignoring the sinking feeling in his gut.  
  
  
“Rose has received a warning from the Potions Guild for supplying Scorpius with unapproved potions,” Harry said. “We agreed it sounds like he has a dependency.”  
  
  
“Yeah, he does,” Albus said after a pause. “His anxiety was getting really bad and he was having attacks every other day, so I told him to talk to someone from mental health about it. He ignored me and went to Rose instead, telling me some bullshit about how he didn’t want his supervisors thinking he wasn’t up to Healing, and he’s been on potions since November and drunk every Friday and Saturday.”  
  
  
“Have you tried talking to him?”  
  
  
“Of _course_ I have. But he just ignores me or gets pissy and closes off.”  
  
  
“Sounds like someone else we know,” Harry said lightly.  
  
  
“Match made in heaven,” Ginny agreed.  
  
  
“It’s not,” Albus said, and the truth of that statement crashed into him. “Maybe it was at some point, but it’s not anymore. And I don’t know what to do.”  
  
  
“Oh, baby,” Ginny murmured, by his side in seconds and pulling him into her arms. He hugged her tight, unable to stop the tears now she was holding him like this.  
  
  
“I’ll grab some tissues,” his father said awkwardly.  
  
  
“Useless,” Ginny said fondly, now stroking his hair. “Let it out, sweetheart, I’m not going anywhere.”  
  
  
_I’m not going anywhere._ Those were the words that broke him, remembering when he’d said those same words to Scorpius less than a year ago, after he’d left him the first time, and Scorpius’s breath had caught in his throat as he’d laced their fingers together, and what had happened to them since then?  
  
  
“I can’t leave him again,” he managed, and Ginny released him.  
  
  
“Hey, Al,” she said softly. “Look at me. Do you want to leave?”  
  
  
“I want to fix it.”  
  
  
“You can’t fix anything if he doesn’t want to. He needs to meet you halfway. You can’t carry a relationship on your own.”  
  
  
“I know.”  
  
  
“Did I tell you about the time your father and I broke up?”  
  
  
“During the war, you mean?”  
  
  
“No, after that.”  
  
  
His father had returned; he passed the box of tissues to Albus and seemed to freeze. “Gin…”  
  
  
“No, he needs to hear this,” Ginny said firmly. “I assume you know what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is, studying psychological Healing.”  
  
  
Albus nodded.  
  
  
“Your father and I both had it, after the war.” She was looking at Harry now, and Albus would have almost felt forgotten if not for her arm still wrapped around his shoulders. “And for the first few weeks, it was fine. We understood each other, we had a shared experience that nobody else could even imagine. But then I went back to school, and he went to Auror training, and they had a Ministry-provided Healer and mandatory counselling. He worked through it, and I spiralled. Hermione found a Muggle counsellor and saw her every holidays, and she was given stacks of books and worksheets that she’d fill out every time something triggered her. You know Hermione, she turned it into a task she had to complete and she saw recovery like she would an Outstanding in her NEWTs. And I don’t know what it was about Luna, whether she was just more resilient than the rest of us or whether she had some secret none of us knew, but she was fine. She drank this green tea with crushed flowers in it that she said helped, but – and you can call me a skeptic – there was no way it did shit. Unless she just believed it did.”  
  
  
“Placebo effect,” Albus murmured.  
  
  
“Something like that,” Ginny agreed. “But your father and I moved in together after I finished school – he had a flat with Ron and Neville already, even though Ron was _horrified_ at the thought of Harry and I sharing a room – ”  
  
  
“He got over it eventually though,” Harry added. “Especially because she made the rent cheaper. I think he was more upset that Hermione didn’t want to move in as well.”  
  
  
“Hermione was sensible,” Ginny said. “Wanted to focus on her new job and for Ron to focus on Auror training, and she didn’t want to strain the relationship. She got a place with the Patil twins, but she was round every other evening anyway. Anyway, that was a pretty bad decision on my part. I always knew I wanted to live with boys, I grew up with brothers and I always thought girls were annoying and silly – ”  
  
  
“She had a bit of internalised misogyny going on too,” Harry added.  
  
  
“Just a tad,” Ginny agreed. “But I wanted them to think I was tough, I guess, and they never talked about the war at home – ”  
  
  
“Because we had counsellors,” Harry interjected. “We were all kinds of fucked up – sorry – but Gin seemed fine so none of us wanted to admit we weren’t.”  
  
  
“And the same went for me,” Ginny continued. “I started resenting Harry for being stronger than me, because he fought so many more battles than I did and faced so much more than I did, and he was coping fine and I wasn’t. So I started picking fights with him so I could sleep on the couch, casting Silencing Charms to make sure I wouldn’t wake anyone up with my nightmares. Eventually I didn’t even need to try – I hated almost everything he did and was well on my way to hating him too. So I packed up my stuff one night and walked out. I lived with Luna for nearly a year.”  
  
  
“I panicked when I woke up and she was gone,” Harry said. “I thought she’d been kidnapped by Death Eater sympathisers, or maybe a group that had somehow escaped an Azkaban sentence. Ron and I were a mess, but then Hermione came over and pointed out she’d packed a bag, and I realised she’d left me.”  
  
  
“It was an awful thing to do,” Ginny said. “It hadn’t even crossed my mind that Harry would worry about me – it wasn’t until Hermione accidentally let slip several months later that he’d had a panic attack that I realised he wasn’t as okay as he’d pretended to be, and that the war left a permanent mark on him – no scar jokes, Harry – and he was only coping because he was getting help for it. So I started getting help too, and then I went back to him. But – and if you take nothing else from anything I’ve said, take this – you can’t _fix_ someone with a mental illness. You can only help someone fix themselves, and if Scorpius isn’t willing to try, he’ll destroy you too.”  
  
  
“I can’t leave him.”  
  
  
“Can’t, or won’t?”  
  
  
“Dad?” Albus asked instead.  
  
  
“Your mother’s right,” Harry said heavily. “You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. Gin left me before I could make that decision, but I probably wasn’t that far off. And if my parents had been around to see that relationship turn sour, I think they’d have told me the same thing that we’re telling you.”  
  
  
“So you think I should leave him?”  
  
  
“I think you know the answer already, or you wouldn’t have asked that question,” Ginny said gently. “And I’m biased – of course I am, I’m your mother – but you haven’t been happy for a long time.”  
  
  
He shook his head – whether it was in agreement with what his mother was saying or because he didn’t want to think about this anymore, he couldn’t tell. His tea had gone cold, but he drank it anyway.  
  
  
“Are you staying for dinner?” Ginny asked, breaking the silence.  
  
  
He shook his head again. “I’m going to talk to Scorpius.”  
  
  
She squeezed his hand. “We’re here if you need us.”  
  
  
“I might be back later,” he said, hating how thick his voice had become. “If it doesn’t go well.”  
  
  
“We’ll be here,” she repeated, and saw him back to the Floo.  
  
  
It was raining, fittingly, when he stepped out of the New Quarter Floo Exchange - a cold, steady rain that promised to soon turn to sleet, and black-clad figures in coats and umbrellas blurred into an endless stream through the streets, silhouetted by glowing shop fronts. The bars were raucous, spilling patrons onto the footpath in clouds of cigarette smoke, and Albus could hear the shouts of _thank God it’s Friday_ booming from within.  
  
  
Of course it was Friday. Scorpius wouldn’t be home – well, he was never home anyway, but he would be out drinking tonight instead of burning the midnight oil at St Mungo’s fuelled on Draught of Peace and sleeplessness and an agonising terror of failure that broke through even the thickest of potion-induced hazes. He wouldn’t be at James’s, not after last time when Albus got a Floo from his brother at one thirty in the morning telling him to _come get Scorpius, for fuck’s sake_ and finding him staggering-drunk with another man’s arm wrapped around his waist – a taller, older man who wouldn’t believe Scorpius had a boyfriend until Albus’s fist landed on his nose.  
  
  
“He wouldn’t leave me alone,” Scorpius said later, more words than he’d said to Albus in weeks, “I told him I was taken and he thought I was lying and I couldn’t get away from him,” and then he’d stopped abruptly and drank Firewhiskey from the bottle with shaking hands.  
  
  
It had been six weeks since they’d last slept together and eight since they’d said I love you with any meaning behind it, three since they’d kissed beyond a perfunctory peck on the cheek; God, there was nothing _left_ of them anymore, and it wasn’t a relationship he was giving up but the mere possibility of having one again.  
  
  
There was a light on in his flat when he passed his building, and he took the stairs two at a time with knots tightening in his stomach because when was the last time Scorpius had been home on a Friday night?  
  
  
He found him curled into a ball on the floor of the kitchen, a glass shattered a few feet away and a letter with the St Mungo’s seal crumpled beside him, white-knuckled fists grasping at his hair and breathing desperate, shallow, heaving breaths into unwilling lungs.  
  
  
“Scorpius?” He wanted to run, get Rose, but it was Friday night and Rose would be out, and he couldn’t leave Scorpius like this, even for a moment. He fell to his knees instead, not caring about the glass (he was a fucking Healer, they were both fucking Healers, and Scorpius had already dealt with worse in his practical training) and took Scorpius’s hands in his own. “I’m here.” He scrambled for what to do next – he had studied this, he knew every clinical detail, but his classes had never taught him how to love someone who was falling apart and five years together hadn’t taught him that either. “Please, Scorp, just – I’m here,” he repeated. “Just breathe. Please.”  
  
  
Scorpius’s hands tightened in his, nails digging into his palms, but Albus didn’t care. “Deep breaths,” he said. “That’s it. And another one.”  
  
  
“I can’t – ”  
  
  
“Yes, you can. You’re okay.” He shifted so his weight was on the knee most free of glass, brushing Scorpius’s fringe from his eyes. “Look at me. I’m not going anywhere.”  
  
  
Scorpius looked up, and the despair in his eyes hit Albus so hard he felt like he couldn’t breathe either, the words he was supposed to say shrivelling up and dying inside him. “I love you,” he said instead, and cursed the tears that welled in his eyes.  
  
  
“I thought you’d stopped,” Scorpius said eventually, his voice hoarse and shaking. “I thought you didn’t. I thought…” he faltered, glancing at their clasped hands. “I was waiting for you to walk out.”  
  
  
Albus didn’t trust his own words, just kissed him as if his life depended on it, and maybe it did – the part of his life that was worth living, at least – the most desperate they had ever been, both straining and gasping and ignoring the glass around them that Scorpius was probably trying not to see as a metaphor –  
  
  
“You look like you’re about to propose,” Scorpius said with the huff of an attempted laugh, and it was true, Albus was down on one bleeding knee, and he pushed his mother’s words to the back of his mind.  
  
  
“I am.”  
  
  
“What?”  
  
  
“Will you marry me?”  
  
  
“Albus – ”  
  
  
“Yes or no,” Albus said, trying not to let his voice shake. “I love you and I always will, and I want us back. Please. Say you’ll marry me. Say we can fix this.”  
  
  
Scorpius swallowed hard. “I’m yours as long as you’ll have me.”  
  
  
“Then I’ll have you until death do us part.”  
  
  
He felt the difference in their next kiss – less desperation, more promise, like all their yesterdays and all their tomorrows rolled into one, but Scorpius broke away too soon and pulled him to his feet, guiding him into their bedroom and taking his wand from the bedside table.  
  
  
“Take off your robes,” he said, and Albus smirked. “Not for that, though I will have you six ways from Sunday later because we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. But your knees are full of glass.”  
  
  
“If you heal me,” Albus began as Scorpius rummaged in the side table for dittany, “Will you let me heal you?”  
  
  
It was a loaded question, and Scorpius froze. “That’s not your job.”  
  
  
“I’m your _fiance_.”  
  
  
“Yeah, and I’d like you to stay that way.” Scorpius picked up his wand, pointing it at Albus’s knees. “Stay still. This shouldn’t hurt unless I fuck it up – ”  
  
  
“Your bedside manner could use some improvement.”  
  
  
“Fuck off. I mean it,” he continued. “My – _everything_ – isn’t your burden to bear. And if you’re staying, you need to promise me you won’t try and take it on. It’s already crippled me, I’m not going to let it cripple us.”  
  
  
“As long as you promise me you’ll get help.”  
  
  
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Scorpius said after a pause. “Mungo’s has referred me. Counselling and addiction programmes, the whole nine yards. I’m not allowed to continue training unless I complete them.” He set his wand down. “All done.”  
  
  
“Already?” Albus inspected his knees; there was nothing to show he had knelt in broken glass barely twenty minutes ago.  
  
  
“It’s not difficult magic,” Scorpius said, his hand resting on Albus’s leg. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed this – the constant, casual contact that had once defined them, like they had to be connected somehow at all times.  
  
  
“You’re a good Healer.”  
  
  
“I’m not, but thanks.” Scorpius didn’t give him a chance to protest. “So. We’re engaged.”  
  
  
“…Yep.”  
  
  
“You sound as surprised as me.”  
  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
  
“You weren’t planning on asking me, were you?”  
  
  
Albus glanced away. “I’ve wanted to marry you since ’23. Rose can back me up on that.”  
  
  
“A lot’s happened since ’23.” Scorpius’s jaw tightened. “I’m not trying to put you on the spot. I just need to hear you say it.”  
  
  
“Say what?”  
  
  
“How close I came to losing you.”  
  
  
“I was going to,” Albus said quietly. “Tonight. I’d made up my mind and if you hadn’t been home and if you hadn’t needed me I would have packed my shit, left you a note and gone to stay with Mum and Dad.”  
  
  
Silence reigned.  
  
  
“So,” Scorpius said eventually, “Pretty fucking close, then.”  
  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
  
“You’re not the one who should be apologising. And there aren’t sufficient words in the English language for me to apologise to you.”  
  
  
“It’s okay,” Albus said, even though they both knew it wasn’t.  
  
  
“We’ll just pretend that’s true,” Scorpius said. “Come on, I want to visit the girls and Lester. We can tell them we’re engaged and Holly will scream and Lester will shake our hands and Rose will hug us till we can’t breathe, and it’ll be like normal.”  
  
  
“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”  
  
  
“…Yes.”  
  
  
“Lester and the girls will be free tomorrow. We can see them then.”  
  
  
“Got somewhere to be tonight?”  
  
  
Albus raised his eyebrows. “Well, you _have_ already disrobed me. It would be rude not to follow through.”  
  
  
“I wouldn’t want to be rude.” Scorpius’s gaze swept over him. “It’s been a while.”  
  
  
“It has,” Albus agreed. “So is this make-up sex or engagement sex?”  
  
  
“Both?”  
  
  
“This is why I’m marrying you.”  
  
  
“Not the only reason, I hope.”  
  
  
“One of many,” Albus conceded, and kissed him – slow and soft, secure in the knowledge that they had the rest of their lives to do this – _I’m not going anywhere_ \- revelling in the sheer joy of being with Scorpius again, properly, rather than the cool and distant charade of a relationship they had kept up for so long. And he had come so close to losing him, losing _this_ , he could have been sitting on his parents’ couch right now, consumed by something that could only be described as grief, instead of lying here with his boyfriend – his _fiance_ , and it seemed almost too good to be true.  
  
  
“Pinch me,” he said.  
  
  
“Why?”  
  
  
“So I know I’m not dreaming.”  
  
  
“Albus, if you dreamt me having a panic attack your subconscious is almost as fucked up as mine.”  
  
  
“Fair point,” he conceded.  
  
  
“And the glass,” Scorpius added.  
  
  
“That too.”  
  
  
“And changing your mind about leaving me at the last minute.”  
  
  
“Point taken.”  
  
  
“We’ve never really been a dream come true, have we?” Scorpius asked, reaching up to brush Albus’s curls from his eyes. “Not like people think we are.”  
  
  
“That’s probably a good thing,” Albus said. “Seeing as you’ve never been able to remember your dreams.”  
  
  
“I don’t think the dream analogies are working for us.”  
  
  
“No,” Albus agreed. “Come up with a better one, my poet.”  
  
  
“I think that’s the best endearment you’ve ever given me.”  
  
  
“I’ve called you the _light of my life_. And my _reason for being_. And your favourite is _poet_.”  
  
  
“I appreciated the others too. And I worked out our analogy.”  
  
  
“What language is it?”  
  
  
“Japanese.”  
  
  
Albus frowned. “You don’t speak _Japanese_.”  
  
  
“No, but I read a lot. Have you heard of _kintsukuroi?_ ”  
  
  
“You know I haven’t. Hurry up and be profound.”  
  
  
“The art of fixing broken pottery with gold, so it’s more beautiful than it was whole.”  
  
  
“Damn,” Albus murmured after a pause. “But who’s the broken pot and who’s the gold?”  
  
  
“Fuck off,” said Scorpius, the only possible response, and tugged him close again.


End file.
